Imtiaz Sooliman – Remembering Stephen McGowan, Yolande & Pierre Korkie & Kevin Harris 2018

Steve on the 25th of November, 2011 36 year old South African

Stephen McGard was kidnapped by al Qaeda terrorists in timber two

newly married Stephen was motorbiking from London back home

to Johannesburg,

abducted. He was held hostage in the deserts of Mali for six years.

My plan was not to be a hero ever. What I told my family was that if

I ever encounter problems, I will just leave everything and leave in

essence,

we had just been for a walk around Timbuktu myself and some other

tourists. I was sitting with my phone typing up a bit of a diary.

It was during the Friday prayer. So the streets were empty. They

walked in three guys and basically took us out one by one into the

street,

cuffed us, loaded us up in the back of a four by four. They

pulled a cargo net over us so we were unable to move, and then we

zoomed out into the desert. I was sitting in my office on a Saturday

morning, and I get this phone call at eight o'clock in the morning,

and it's from the lady in Holland that he was riding with her son.

And when she introduced herself, I said, Don't tell me. This is bad

news. She said, I'm afraid so that's the first we heard. It was

a shattering news, as you can imagine,

some 18 months later, in May 2013

Pierre and Yolanda Koki were abducted by al Qaeda terrorists in

Yemen.

At the time, they had been resident with their two young

children in the southern town of tyres for some four years, Pierre

taught English, and Yolanda ran grassroots projects in the local

community.

Then came war.

As the situation deteriorated, the corkis found themselves trapped

waiting for their passports to be renewed by the Yemen authorities,

with a lot of help and and support from our Yemeni friends. We've

managed to finally get our passports extracted from the

government system, and we were actually that afternoon. We just

left the house to go and collect the passports with the exit visas.

And Les Marie, our daughter was 14 at the time. She was going to come

with us, but she stayed behind with our son. Pier was a very

hands on father. There were always hugs and kisses being exchanged,

so those were part of the last few moments, and we left the house,

and that was the last time Pierre

saw how spout knew anything about his children.

That first morning, I phoned all over, every number in Pretoria

from the government side. I know governments don't pay, but

whatever the ransom figure was, I want my son home, and I think I

said to every minister I met, have you got children? Put yourself in

my shoes. What would you do if your son or daughter, whatever was

taken

so I was doing what any father would do when my God, or I was a

passenger, was yanked open. I think the realization that

something was going wrong hit us. I was dragged across the road. I

looked back, Pierre had a gun to his head, and within the next few

seconds, Pierre was also yanked out of the car and brought and we

were bundled into the car. There were guys all over the place. The

car was full to capacity, and we went off. We were being kidnapped.

But our attention turned to our children, and what were they going

through? Would they be safe? Would they harm them? What would they

do?

You're incarcerated, so your humaneness is you stripped of your

humaneness and you started going to introspection,

worry about the children, and we had no contact. We tried

desperately, several times every day, if we could, we tried to

initiate a conversation to get contact with him, but we were not

allowed. It wasn't allowed. But mostly Pierre, I cannot imagine if

I would have made it without him.

He managed to keep us to a sort of a routine when, we could, we tried

to just divide our day. Now you're living without a block, so you've

got to try and manage the time. Sometimes you wouldn't know

whether it was day or night, depending on where they kept you.

Just to keep going, you know, spend time in prayer, talking.

Singing,

rubbing each other's backs, going back to the same routine.

By 2013 through their ongoing relief campaign, gift of the

givers had established a significant profile in Yemen,

becoming aware of the corkis abduction, Dr Suleiman and nas

hamatin gifts representative in Yemen decided to escalate the

campaign, thereby raising their profile and building further

goodwill.

Our advantage is we have a profile in Yemen. People know who we are.

What we can do is we'll send more supplies, more goods, and start

increasing the amount of stuff, we started selling into Yemen to

build goodwill with everybody. And we said, hopefully, maybe it will

soften somebody and say, Look, South Africa is helping us. Why we

took a South Africa. Pierre was very, very sick at that time. He

woke up one morning and he could not hear anything. He was

completely 100% deaf. It was very traumatic

time for us, and then the sheik came and said we were going to be

released

on the night of the ninth

they woke us up in the middle of the night somewhere.

They pulled us out of the room next door into their side, and

they pushed down pier on the floor, and they said I was going

first. And I said, No, no, there's a mistake. There's a mistake.

We're going together. The Shaykh had said, we're going together.

Beer jumped up. He couldn't hear he was trying to ask, what's going

on? What's going on? It was a confusing, horrendous few seconds

we we were holding each other, trying to make sense of what was

going on, and they tried to calm us down, but they then, they

separated us forcefully. And the last thing

Pia said was, if you see the children before I see them, tell

them I love them and I love you.

Even though I was released, I was still a hostage. My heart had

stayed behind almost in Yemen. So I was sort of living on two

continents, and lots of things went wrong. It was horrendous to

miltius. 11 months that followed, and that's the one thing I have so

much appreciation for with for MTS and for Annas, is

they were 100% accessible. They were not at all phased if I wanted

to talk at two in the morning.

They were available to hear my fears. They were available to give

me to encourage the children and myself. They kept having hope, and

they kept trying to find a channel or a way to continue with, with

negotiations for beer, it took us a long time. We had to use tribal

leaders who met tribal leaders, who met tribal leaders, and over

the period of time, the tribal leaders eventually, on our behalf,

sort of pressurized al Qaeda to say, look, we're passing on our

lands all the time. I kept on sending more supplies. South

Africa have brought in so much goods, that's why we have to look

the other way.

So at 559 on the morning of six december 2014

I tell Yolandi a message. I said, Yolandi, the wait is finally over.

He is coming back home.

I

got ready, got dressed, washed my hair, maybe today was the day that

I would be able to fly and

be, you know, be reunited with beer. And then I got a call from

Colonel Aaron stradon,

the FBI on the other side as well, stating that the Americans

had gone into launch a second rescue operation for the American

hostage, Luke summers, and they were

discovered

before they had executed the complete rescue operation,

apparently, and out of revenge, the captors then went in and

killed

Pia and Luke.

That was the most difficult thing you know for me to eventually tell

you jolandi, but she was gracious. She said, Look, I'm not blaming

anybody, I forgive everybody. Nothing will bring Pierre back.

You can't have hate, you can't have anger. It's not gonna bring

Pierre cocky back. And she said Pierre cocky was the kind of guy

would say, You know what? Forget everything, forgive everybody, let

things lie and go forward. So I have to be what Pierre would want

me to be, and that's what I'm going to be now, and that's how it

ended,

feeling totally abandoned, held hostage for almost four years in

June 2015 Steven McGard, under the instruction and supervision of his

al Qaeda captors, made a proof of life video which was posted on

social media.

June 25

Him, for some strange reason, the TV is on mouse in the morning, and

suddenly I see this video of Stephen McGowan is like, got to

the TV on for me, and I said, this is Stephen McGowan, and he's

showing the pictures. And the way the video is talking. I said to

me, these guys want to negotiate. I phoned Malcolm. I said, Malcolm,

I'm taking this case off for you. These guys want to talk. This

video is telling me that very, very clearly, we work the

mechanics out afterwards. But yes, I'm going to argue now, because

these guys want to talk. Let's not lose the opportunity. I heard

about gift of the givers in I think it was around October in

2014

some guys drove into our camp and they said to me, there is a South

African Muslim organization who are now going to negotiate your

release. And then they turned to the Swedish guy and said, and

they're going to negotiate yours as well. And this process took

over two years. Involved a South African government. South African

government involved the Swedish government. We told in the

channels what to do, how it has to be done. We got all information

for them. Eventually, al Qaeda sent a message. You've done your

job. You've got your Government to speak to the Mali government. You

will have your Government to speak to state security, because you

spoke to our intermediary.

Again, what message is coming to an intermediary? You sent me the

videos. They are both alive. Now you have to pull back beyond this

point. You as an NGO cannot go

in july 2017,

after six years of captivity in the desert wilderness of Mali,

Stephen McGann was released by his al Qaeda captors and arrived back

home in Johannesburg, South Africa.

It's the biggest surprise day of my life. I looked out and there's

this big land rover

with two big guys in it, and, you know, I opened up, let them in,

and they said, No, they've got no news. My heart sunk. They said

they're waiting for a phone call. And eventually I said to them, you

know, I said, If Stephen is coming back, I just want, please that you

tell I don't want him to arrive off the plane, to give Kath a hug,

to give me a hug, and then say, Where's mom?

I said they must disclose to him that his mother's passed away.

Yeah, I had many questions the previous evening, asking what I

was going home to, that I have a wife, that I have a family,

and well, you can imagine. So, you know,

another two, I think, Land Rovers arrived with this big black CDs,

and out jumped Steve

fully closed

as he lived in the desert, and my father was the first, first, first

guy. So walked out, gave me a big hug, lots of tears, and

they are quite like an emotional overload, if you like,

obviously, my mom passed away. There were certain topics we

didn't discuss the first at the time, but it was, I suppose, six

years of questions and emotion squeezed into

a moment, a 10 second moment when I saw my father. It was, it was

quite overwhelming. I felt fantastic on the one hand, but

very sad on the other. We were a month too late for him to see his

mother. We didn't succeed in getting out for his mother to see

him or for him to see his brother. That was the very sad part for us.

I.